TM7,
You need to re read your history books.
Congress (the house) writes tax law. The House since 1930 has been Democrat for the most part. They are the ones that have raised taxes over and over again. In GHW Bush's term and the famouse Read my lips.... The Democrat held congress over rode his veto and we had new taxes, these taxes, along with the CNN coverage of the recession drove us into a recession. We came out of it in Clintons first year as a result of the media and we were driven into the recession we currently have by the clinton tax increases, the terrorist attacks, and the over spending of our government with out having an economic base to support that spending. For an economy to be healthy they have to export or manufacture something. Mining of raw materials or production of products needs to happen in an area inorder for money to flow to the area. For example let's pick the mountains. It has natural resources of timber and coal. People want these for construction, manufacturing, and energy. As there is money to be made bringing those products out of the mountains, rich people wanting to be richer, hire people to start a company to timber, mine, and ship. People move there, roads are built and money is exchanged for labor of bringing out those materials, some manufacturing may take place such as building furniture with the wood that too is sold. The problem we have is now in the mountians, we do not allow the mining of coal, or the cutting of timber so those people are out of work, the factory that makes the furniture now has to import wood and the costs to get wood up the mountian are too much so they either close the factory or move it. Now you have a pool of money on the mountain that is going to diminish over time as new products (needs not wants) are brought up the mountain but no new goods are sold off it. Our ecoinomy has become that mountain, Our great port cities were built to export our goods and raw materials all over the world, now sadly all we really export are empty shipping containers. We had fleets of merchant vessels all over the world, now we have taxed them out of existance and US owned shipping is now flagged else whare and most shipping companies no longer have fleets, they pay others to ship. More money spilling out of our economy. You may say big deal if a few people on the mountain are out of work, but the miners, the loggers, and the furniture makers all had wants and needs that generated other jobs. Merchants, truck drivers, teachers, bankers, look around your standard small town and think of every thing needed to run the town. If new money is not brought in, then all those jobs dry up. And yes the gap between the Rich and the poor gets larger as there are fewer and fewer middle class. Taking from the rich is not going to fix the problem. All it will do is take what money is out there to spend and move around in the economy. Figure the world economy as a bunch of buckets of water. Our bucket no longer gets new water put in it. Sure we have a huge bucket but that bucket is being emptied at quart rates now, and we are borrowing a cup from others to keep our bucket 1/2 full. At some point the people that loaned us the water to keep our bucket full are going to want it back plus more for loaning it to them.
At the point where it no longer makes the rich money they will close the factories, the mines, the trucking company that close the middle class shops, and as people move away in search of other jobs the realestate become woth less as noone wants to move there and is willing to buy a house, rent an apartment, you have a modern ghost town. unfortunatly it is happening all over. The cause is not the rich, but the rules of an out of control government and the agencies it created to make rules and regulations. If your job were to write rules and regulations, even if they are not needed you are going to write them to keep your job, after all who wants to pay a guy to sit in an office all day ready to write a rule when needed? No we are paying him to write rules so he does. Every rule adds costs to everything and chokes the economy.
A healthy economy exports and produces goods and materials, a healthy growing economy has a government that spends less than 25% of GDP, a stagnent economy spends 33to 35% and a government that spends more than 40% of GDP is in a decline.
How, does taking more water out of the bucket, help fill the bucket? Moeny in the hands of the people in an economy is spent about 5 times as it gets moved through the economy. Tax money gets spent 2.5 to 3 times as it gets moved through the economy. HOW is taking more moeny out of the economy and giving government going to expand the economy greater than leaving in the economy?
